Fairy Dance 2

  She straightened her back and stared resolutely down the hallway, and then took one leaden step forward. Once she started moving, there would be no going back.

  It seemed the hallway continued without end. There wasn’t even a scratch on the walls, much less any joints between panels to break their monotony. After a time, she couldn’t even be sure she was moving forward anymore. Only the occasional orange light overhead marked her progress, and with great relief she eventually noticed a second door far ahead.

  It was exactly the same as the last one. She carefully touched the panel, and again the door slid open silently.

  Behind the door was another identical hallway, only this one ran left and right. Disappointed, she stepped through, then was startled to see that when the door automatically closed, it melted perfectly into the wall without a trace that it was ever there. She felt around in a panic, but nothing made the door open again.

  Asuna’s shoulders slumped, but she told herself to forget the door—she wouldn’t be going back, anyway. She raised her head and looked both ways.

  This time the hallway was gently curved, rather than straight. After a moment of consideration, she took the right path.

  Onward she walked, her quiet footsteps the only sound. Again her sense of movement began to melt away, until it seemed that she had simply been walking in loops around the same endless circle of hallway. And then, finally, Asuna spotted something that wasn’t just another stretch of wall.

  Stuck on the gray wall of the inside curve was a posterlike object. She raced over and saw that it was a map of the area. She consulted it eagerly.

  At the top of the rectangular sign was a title in a plain font that read LABORATORY MAP, FLOOR C. Below it was a simple diagram. It showed that the structure had three floors, each of which was a big circle, and she was on the top floor.

  There was nothing on Floor C except for the circular hallway. There wasn’t even a marking for the straight tunnel that had brought her here from the birdcage. But on Floors B and A below, the inside of the circle was lined with various rooms and facilities: Data Viewing Room, Main Monitoring Room, Sleeping Quarters, and so on.

  Access to the other floors was found at an elevator, located at the top of the circle on the map. The elevator shaft met all three circular floors, and continued down below that.

  Asuna followed the straight shaft down on the map until it ended with a large, rectangular room. A chill ran down her back when she read the label: TEST SUBJECT STORAGE.

  “Test subjects…”

  The words left a sour aftertaste in her mouth.

  This was clearly the laboratory for Sugou’s illegal experiments. Hiding it all within a virtual game would certainly make it easy to conceal from the company. And if the secret was in danger of leaking out, the simple press of a button would remove all traces of it without a paper trail.

  Knowing the purpose of his research, the term test subjects could only refer to one thing. They were the other former SAO players that Sugou still held captive. Through some means, he had their minds held within that storage room on the map.

  After a long silence, Asuna turned and began to walk down the curving hallway again. She kept a quick pace for several more minutes until a plain sliding door came into view along the outside wall to her left. There was a plate affixed to the wall next it, upon which there was a downward-pointing triangle.

  She took a deep breath and touched it with her finger. The door instantly slid open to reveal a small, rectangular room. She stepped inside and turned around, and came face-to-face with an elevator panel, just like any in real life.

  After a moment’s hesitation, Asuna pressed the lowest of the four buttons. The door closed, and to her surprise she felt a falling sensation. The small box carrying Asuna descended silently through the enormous tree, and after many seconds, the virtual sense of speed eased away. A crack that had not existed before opened in the middle of the smooth white door, and the two halves retreated into the walls.

  As quietly as she could, Asuna snuck out of the doorway.

  Before her eyes was another plain hallway no different from the ones above. She checked to make sure there was no one around, then started walking.

  The outfit Oberon had given her was only a simple, sheer one-piece that offered little comfort, but she was glad to be barefooted now. If she were wearing shoes, she couldn’t have avoided creating footsteps that would echo down the hall. Back in SAO, she would sometimes take the defensive hit and go barefoot, just to make it easier to ambush unsuspecting monsters from behind for extra damage.

  Even outside of battle, back in the ruined sector of Algade, she’d play the “Sneak Attack” game with Kirito, Klein, and Liz, and with her light equipment and almost no sources of noise, Asuna always placed well. She’d never been able to land a back attack on Kirito, so one time she tried going barefoot out of frustration. He sensed her wooden blade just before it hit him on the back of the head and easily slipped out of the way, then grabbed her leg and tickled her foot until she thought she’d die laughing.

  It was that world she longed for now, even more than the real world that she couldn’t be sure actually existed anymore. When she realized that tears were coming to her eyes, Asuna shook her head to get her feelings under control.

  Kirito was waiting for her in the real world. The only place she truly belonged was in his arms. She had to keep moving to make that happen.

  This hallway was not quite so long. She soon came across a tall, narrow door straight ahead. Asuna told herself that if this one was locked, she’d have to go back up into the laboratory to look for a system console. But contrary to her fears, the door slid open, just like the rest. She had to squint to block out the powerful light that came from within.

  “…?!”

  Once she could see inside the door, Asuna gasped.

  It was a breathtakingly vast chamber.

  She thought it resembled an enormous white event hall. It was hard to gauge the scale of the room, because the three walls in the distance held not a single detail to distinguish them visually. The entire ceiling was glowing white, and the similarly colored floor had neatly packed rows of short pillars, arranged together into a grid.

  Once she was sure there was no movement inside, Asuna hesitantly stepped into the room.

  From her position, there were eighteen rows of the pillarlike objects. If the room was a perfect square, that would make the total eighteen squared, or just over three hundred. She approached one of the pillars, the fear sharp in her throat.

  The round pillar reached from the floor to Asuna’s chest. It was just wide enough that she could fit both arms around it. Something was floating just off the smooth, flat surface of the top. It was, quite clearly…a human brain.

  It was actual size, but the coloring was not realistic—it was made of some bluish-purple translucent material. The model was extremely fine, however. It looked more like a sapphire sculpture than a hologram.

  Upon closer examination, Asuna saw that there were rhythmic pulses of light at various spots on the transparent brain, little lines that turned into colorful sparks at their end points. They were almost like bundles of extremely fine sparklers.

  She watched, brows furrowed, as the spreading network of light suddenly pulsed stronger. The sparks went from yellow to red, flickering menacingly. A translucent graph below the brain was recording sharp peaks. The detailed log running next to the graph was full of numbers and symbols, along with the occasional word like pain and terror.

  It’s suffering, Asuna realized suddenly.

  The brain right in front of her was agonized with pain, sadness, perhaps even fear. Those little sparks were screams. A faint image of the face belonging to that brain floated before Asuna’s eyes like a vision, twisted to the extreme, the jaw open as wide as it could go, silently screaming over and over and over.

  She fell backward, unable to stand the horrifying image. She flashed back to the TEST SUBJECT STORAGE label on th
e map and Oberon’s phrase, emotion-manipulation technology. The two concepts overlapped and formed one terrible conclusion.

  This brain and the hundreds around it were not computer-generated objects, but actual human minds—real-time monitors of the former SAO players. People who should have been freed at the end of the game, but who had somehow been spirited away to this place by Sugou’s hand and subjected to inhumane research. This was a map of the manipulation of thoughts, emotions, and memories through their NerveGear.

  “How…how could you do such a horrible thing…”

  She covered her mouth with both hands. The research being done here was one of the great taboos, like human cloning. It wasn’t just a simple crime. This was the destruction and desecration of the last vestige of human dignity: the soul.

  Asuna craned her neck to the right. Six feet away was an identical pillar with another transparent brain floating on top. The construction was identical, but whoever this brain image belonged to, it was much calmer. The sparks were yellow with the barest tinge of red, and as slow as thick liquid.

  On it continued, to the next row and beyond: a seemingly infinite array of prisoners, their crystal brains a spectrum of colors, each one screaming in despair.

  Asuna fought down her impulse to panic and rubbed at the teardrops pooling in her eyes.

  It was unforgivable. She’d make him pay. She and Kirito hadn’t risked their lives to help Sugou undertake such a horrendous sin. She’d expose his crime and see that he was punished appropriately.

  “Just hang on. I’m going to save you soon,” she whispered, caressing the side of the anguished brain. She looked up again, eyes resolute, and strode with purpose through the rows of pillars farther into the room.

  Just as she counted ten rows of pillars, Asuna heard something that sounded like a human voice. She instinctually dropped down behind the nearest source of cover and scanned the area carefully, trying to discern the source of the sound. It seemed to be coming from farther ahead and to the right. She snuck forward, almost crawling on hands and knees.

  After several pillars, she noticed something odd ahead.

  “…?!”

  Asuna shrank back, blinked rapidly, then stuck her head out again.

  The sixty-first floor of Aincrad was nicknamed “Bugland” by its players. As the name suggested, it was overflowing with insect-themed monsters, a particular type of hell to squeamish female players like Asuna. The worst were the giant, slimy bull slugs. Their black-spotted gray hides were covered with a slick substance, and each followed its target with three pairs of eyestalks of varied sizes, only to then attack with horrendous tentacles that extended from its mouth. In short, they were straight out of a nightmare.

  Now, just a few dozen feet away from Asuna, two creatures that eerily resembled those bull slugs were having a conversation.

  The giant slugs were watching one of the brains and excitedly discussing it. The slug on the right was screeching with delight, its eyestalks swiveling back and forth.

  “Ooh! He’s having another dream about Spica. The B13 and B14 fields are off the scale. Sixteen’s pretty high, too…He’s lovin’ it.”

  The slug on the left, who was prodding the holo-window floating next to the test subject, replied, “Sure it’s not a coincidence? Only his third time, right?”

  “It’s the emotional guidance circuit modeling, I tell you. I put that image of Spica into his memory centers, but this frequency is way over threshold, right?”

  “Hmm. Guess we should raise the monitoring sample rate…”

  Asuna shrank back into the shadow of the pillar, her skin crawling at the hideous slugs and their screeching voices. She wasn’t sure why they had to take that appearance, but it seemed clear that they were Sugou’s assistants in his inhumane research. Based on their conversation, they didn’t seem to possess the slightest hint of a moral compass.

  She clenched her right fist, wishing she had a sword in it. She’d show them the end they deserved.

  Asuna retreated, trying to control the fires of rage that consumed her. Once she’d put some distance between herself and the slugs, she headed farther toward the back of the chamber. Carefully but quickly, she passed row after row of pillars until she was at the last line. There, she saw a simple black cube floating in front of the distant white wall.

  It reminded her of the system console she’d once seen in the underground labyrinth below the base floor of Aincrad. If she could access that cube with administrator privileges, perhaps she could finally log out of this mad world.

  There was nothing to hide her up ahead. Asuna took a deep breath to steel herself, then leaped forward out of the shadow of the pillar.

  She raced over to the console as quickly and quietly as she could. It was only thirty feet or so, but it felt like a mile. She kept her feet running, trying desperately not to get tangled up, expecting to hear a shout from behind with every step—until, finally, she reached the console safely. Asuna spun around just in case—she could see the waving tentacles over the endless rows of pillars. The slugs were still lost in debate.

  She returned to the console. The diagonally sloped top surface was black and quiet, but there was a thin slit on the right side with a silver keycard still stuck in the top of the slot. With a silent prayer, she grabbed the card and slid it downward.

  A ping sounded and she ducked her head. A blue window and holo-keyboard appeared to the left of the card slit.

  The window was filled with a variety of menus. She browsed the small English letters quickly, trying to hold back her panicked impatience.

  She extended a trembling finger to touch a button marked TRANSPORT at the bottom left. Another window buzzed open with a full map of the laboratory area. This system would apparently let her jump to various rooms within the facility.

  But she had no more business in this place. Asuna scanned the lists frantically until she caught sight of a small button that said EXIT VIRTUAL LAB.

  This is it! she thought to herself and touched the button. Another window popped up. The small rectangle asked EXECUTE LOG-OFF SEQUENCE? with two buttons marked OK and CANCEL.

  Please, God, she silently prayed, moving her hand to touch the button.

  A gray tentacle wrapped around her wrist.

  “…!!”

  Asuna somehow held in the scream that threatened to burst out of her throat. She desperately tried to lower her finger to the button, but the tentacle was as firm as steel wire. When she tried to swing her left hand over instead, another tentacle caught it. Both of her arms were pulled up into the air until her feet left the ground.

  Asuna’s captor slowly turned her around in midair. As she feared, it was the giant slugs she’d passed moments earlier.

  Four orange eyes the size of tennis balls swooped toward her on narrow stalks. The expressionless orbs gazed impassively at her, as though scanning her face and body. Eventually the left slug’s round mouth slurped open to emit a screeching voice.

  “Who are you? What are you doing? And how did you get here?”

  Struggling to keep her fear under control, Asuna tried to answer as casually as she could. “Let me down! I’m Mr. Sugou’s friend. He was letting me observe the area, and I’m just on my way out.”

  “Oh? Why didn’t I know about this?” the slug on the right asked, two of its eyes tilting sideways in an apparent sign of curiosity. “Did you hear anything?”

  “Nope. Besides, it’d be an awful idea to show this place to an outsider.”

  “Oh…hang on a sec…” A round eyeball stretched closer until it stared directly into Asuna’s face. “I know who you are. You’re the one Sugou’s keeping at the top of the World Tree…”

  “Oh, yeah. I remember that. Man, the boss has it made. Look at this cutie!”

  “Ugh…”

  Asuna looked over her shoulder and tried to hit the button with her foot, but a fresh tentacle from the slug’s mouth reached out and caught her ankle. She wriggled, trying to break free, but
it was too late—the prompt had apparently timed out, and the log-out window returned to the original menu.

  “C’mon, don’t make trouble now.”

  The slugs wrapped her in more and more tentacles until she was truly immobilized. The thin, fleshy ropes dug into the soft skin of her stomach and thighs.

  “Ouch! Stop…Let go of me, you monsters!”

  “Well, that’s mean. We’re just in the middle of experimenting on deep sensory mapping.”

  “Yes. It took a lot of training to learn how to manipulate these bodies like this!”

  Asuna’s face screwed up at the unique dull pain of the virtual world, as though her nerves were coated with silk, but she managed to shoot back a response.

  “Aren’t you…supposed to be scientists?! How can you undertake such…such illegal, inhumane experiments and still live with yourselves?!”

  “Personally, I think this is still more humane than exposing test animals’ brains to open air and jamming electrodes into them. I mean, all they’re doing here is dreaming.”

  “Yeah. Sometimes we even let ’em have a really wonderful dream. It’s nice to spread the love once in a while.”

  “…You’re insane…” Asuna choked. A chill running down her back. The emotionless slugs weren’t a facade; it was their true form.

  The slugs shared a look and began to discuss between themselves, unaffected by Asuna’s retorts.

  “The boss is on a business trip, right? You should go out and get some orders.”

  “Tsk, fine. Don’t go having too much fun without me, Yana.”

  “I know, I know. Just get outta here.”

  One of the slugs released its hold on Asuna’s body and used a tentacle to deftly flip through the console’s menus. A few buttons later, the large creature silently and abruptly disappeared.

  “…!!”

  Asuna felt panic burning her body like a hot poker. She twisted and writhed with all of her strength. The exit to the real world—what she’d dreamed of for so long—was right next to her. The doorway was slightly open, and the light from the outside was shining through, beckoning her.